[Lexicog] Gogen-kai by Tsutomu Sugimoto

[Benjamin Barrett]

Last night on "Shuukan (Weekly Publication) Book Review" on the American
broadcast of Japan's NHK channel, Tsutomu Sugimoto appeared in a feature
highlighting his book on etymology, "Gogen-kai" (sea of word origins). The
feature is part of a series titled "The World of the Japanese Language".

He said it took him two years to write the 851-page book with some 1700
entries
(http://www.amazon.co.jp/exec/obidos/ASIN/4487797438/qid=1117526913/sr=8-1/r
ef=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/249-0255769-6125911). The spacing looked fairly liberal
and it's 22 cm, but still, that seems like a lot of fast writing.

He stressed his use of foreign languages when required to demonstrate word
origins, and he also used linguistics to explain sound changes.

One interesting feature is his insistence on examples from three periods of
literature so you can see how word usage has changed over the centuries.

He also commented that he thought hiragana, one of the Japanese syllabaries,
should be stressed more in school.

His interview was given along with a series of word books. The page for the
show is http://www.nhk.or.jp/book/review/index.html.

Benjamin Barrett
Baking the World a Better Place
www.hiroki.us




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